I use suicidal thoughts as a tranquilizer

Believe it or not, I use suicidal thoughts to calm myself so I can sleep. I have been doing it for so long that I hardly even notice, but I do it almost every night.

All my life I have suffered from anxiety and insomnia. I have a ritual at bedtime in which I lie down and recite, as if it were prayers, the lines from Keats:

"Darkling I listen, and for many a time,
I have been half in love with easeful death
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme
To take into the air my quiet breath.
Now more than ever seems it rich to die
To cease upon the midnight with no pain."​

Then I make believe that I have taken an overdose and that my body is slowly shutting down. Then I recite the lines from "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen:"Nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters to me."

Now I would like to ask a question that may seem odd, to anyone who has attempted suicide. I remember reading in the novel Shogun how when the hero said he was ready to commit hara-kiri and had actually decided he would do it, he felt a tremendous calm and liberation.

Anxiety is fear of the future. I have lived in a torture chamber of anxiety and insomnia all my life. Is there a period after the decision to kill oneself that you feel a wonderful release from anxiety, if only for a short time, because you have no future?

I cannot ask a successful suicide for obvious reasons, so I will ask anyone who has attempted it.

In answer to your question: Is there a period after the decision to kill oneself that you feel a wonderful release from anxiety, if only for a short time, because you have no future?

Yes and No. Yes, you feel a wonderful release from anxiety but it's not because you have no future. It's because you invision another future.

You become stuck in some fantasy world where no pain or suffering exists. No two people have the same fantasy, it's the perfect world they envision for themselves. Kind of like an ideal world.

This perfect world doesn't last very long and the jolt back to reality hurts. Making it even worse to deal with than before. The intensity of the anxiety comes back full force making it all unbareable to deal with. The high is so intense that it feels like it only lasts for a few seconds, and then it's gone.

Is there a period after the decision to kill oneself that you feel a wonderful release from anxiety, if only for a short time, because you have no future?

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Yes, that is true. Your problems become irrelevant and it feels like a huge burden has been lifted from your shoulders. When you embrace a clear-cut solution, everything else is pushed to the periphery, dropping out of sight.
It doesn't remove the overwhelming feeling of sorrow though and you might fall into the grieving process, both for yourself and those you will leave behind.

Thank you for that reply, Peaceblue, but in fact I do not envision another future. I am pretty sure that God is just an invention of man and that there is no afterlife. I am not sad so much as in constant anxiety. Also, we are talking about people who failed in their attempt. I guess it is impossible, by definition, to talk to those who suceeded.

It doesn't remove the overwhelming feeling of sorrow though and you might fall into the grieving process, both for yourself and those you will leave behind.

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Thank you Aleth, but in fact I resent the argument that I cannot liberate myself because of the effect on those I leave behind. Another form of that argument (which I realize you did not raise) is that suicide is selfish because it hurts the people left behind.

First of all, it is my life!

Secondly, people make decisions all the time that hurt others without being called selfish. A person might accept a high-paying job in another country and, emails and telephones notwithstanding, their friends will basically "lose" them.

When a man or woman decides to marry, there may be a whole series of people who are sad and disappointed because they would have wanted them.

If a person wins a job competition, they make all the other candidates disappointed and unhappy, but nobody calls them selfish.

If there are people out there who love me, I would expect them to make a final act of love by respecting and accepting my decision.

To use love as a manipulative tool to control decisions I make about my life in fact perverts love into a control mechanism.

Thank you Aleth, but in fact I resent the argument that I cannot liberate myself because of the effect on those I leave behind.

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No, I meant it the other way round. When you accept your own death, you might feel grief in saying goodbye to loved ones. When you die you lose them as well. I broke down in grief writing a suicide note just before a near-successful attempt.
I was not arguing for or against suicide. Just answering your question from my own experience with it.

No, I meant it the other way round. When you accept your own death, you might feel grief in saying goodbye to loved ones. When you die you lose them as well. I broke down in grief writing a suicide note just before a near-successful attempt.
I was not arguing for or against suicide. Just answering your question from my own experience with it.